A hairdressing group was managing its financials across multiple spreadsheets with no consistent structure and nothing linking them together. A previous consultant had built macros to automate some of the reporting — but these either did not work at all or ran so slowly that the team had given up using them. The owner had no reliable way to see the financial position of the whole business without spending hours pulling figures together manually.
The underlying data problems were significant: inconsistent date formats, duplicated records, transactions coded differently across spreadsheets, and formulas referencing ranges that had moved or been deleted. The macros were built on top of this inconsistency and broke whenever the data structure changed — which was often. The result was a system that was technically there but practically unusable.
We started with a full data cleanse — going through every spreadsheet, standardising formats, removing duplicates, correcting coding inconsistencies, and restructuring everything so it connected properly. Once the foundation was clean, we rebuilt all the macros from scratch: faster, more robust, and properly documented so the team could understand what each one did.
The rebuild followed a clear principle: simplicity over cleverness. Where the original macros had been complex and fragile, the rebuilt versions were straightforward and resilient. We tested every macro against real data before handover and documented each one with plain-language explanations of what it does and what to do if something looks wrong.
For the first time, the owner could open one file and see accurate figures across the whole business. Macros that used to take minutes to run — or fail entirely — now run in seconds. The finance process that previously required several hours of manual work each month now takes a fraction of that time.
The data cleanse also surfaced several discrepancies that had been invisible in the previous setup — transactions coded incorrectly that were affecting the reported figures. Correcting these gave the owner a more accurate picture of the business than they had ever had. The foundation is now clean enough that any future automation or reporting work can be built on top of it reliably.
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